Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver Literary Elements

Director

Martin Scorsese

Leading Actors/Actresses

Robert DeNiro, Cybill Shephard, Jodie Foster

Supporting Actors/Actresses

Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks

Genre

Neo-Noir, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Language

English

Awards

Palm d'Or (Best Picture) 1976 Cannes Film Festival; Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress (Foster) and Best Original Score

Date of Release

February 8, 1976

Producer

Julia and Michael Phillips

Setting and Context

New York City during the 1976 election season

Narrator and Point of View

With very few exceptions, the film is presented either through Travis Bickle's own perspective, or with him as the central protagonist.

Tone and Mood

A pervasive mood of paranoia and alienation gradually intensifies throughout the film as a reflection of the growing alienation and paranoia of Travis Bickle. The mood is often ominous and foreboding, rarely sunny, humorous, or warm.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: Travis Bickle. Antagonist: Matthew ("Sport")

Major Conflict

Travis eventually comes into conflict with just about every character he meets, including Betsy, whose rejection of him prompts his withdrawal from society. While Betsy's rejection is an inciting incident, the major conflict does not occur until Travis comes into conflict with Iris's pimp, Sport, and sets about trying to rescue Iris from a career as a prostitute.

Climax

The climax is the bloody violence that Travis enacts against Sport and several other low-life figures whom he views as imprisoning Iris in a life of prostitution.

Foreshadowing

The rain that falls down upon the nightmarish urban landscape (and Travis Bickle's own explicitly addressed call for a more symbolic rain to come along and clean the city up) foreshadows the reaction of society to the act of vigilantism enacted by Travis. He is viewed as having cleaned up New York City.
Additionally, Travis's purchase of a number of firearms is foreshadowed by the cabbies' conversation about self-protection as taxi driver, and Doughboy's offer to put Travis in touch with Easy Andy.

Understatement

After he is valorized for his rescue of Iris, Travis deflects praise for his actions and resists what he sees as exaggerations of his heroism and the drama of his coma following the event.

Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques

Scorsese's camera seems to be in constant motion throughout the film, manifesting itself as an expression of the nervous energy and paranoid anxiety of its main character. Closer examination reveals that the pace at which Scorsese's camera moves actually increases progressively throughout the film, just as Travis's perspective becomes more and more frenetic.

Allusions

The story of Travis trying to save "an innocent" he views as having been corrupted by low-lifes is a direct allusion to the thematic thrust driving the narrative of The Searchers, a 1950's western in which John Wayne plays a similarly alienated and paternalistic man on a mission to retrieve a young woman abducted by Indians.

Paradox

The overarching paradox of Taxi Driver is that the almost unprecedented explosion of violence of the film served to make Travis Bickle an iconic symbol of the mentally unstable Vietnam Vet ill-prepared to return to society. Travis is a complicated and paradoxical figure, and his violent acts do not quite match up with his ultimate rescue of a child prostitute.

Parallelism

The most striking example of visual parallelism in Taxi Driver is the contrast and comparison between Betsy and Iris. In addition to the visual parallel that they are both blondes, they also parallel each other by both wearing red when they sit down and spend time with Travis. Thematically, they are parallels of each other because the both represent—at least in the mind of Travis—a pure and innocent damsel who must be rescued from her distress. When Betsy turns out not to be as innocent as he thought, Iris becomes her substitute.

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